By Glenda Winders
When I set off with 159 other passengers on a Danube River cruise we couldn't have imagined the beauty of the places we'd visit, the variety of experiences we'd have or the kindness of the people we'd meet. Every day was filled with new surprises.
We flew into Prague to explore the Czech Republic before meeting up with our ship. Our large group was then divided into four smaller groups, each with its own program director.
"We're not smiling and cheerful like you Americans," Eszter Papp, the Hungarian director of my group, told us at a meeting the night we arrived, although she turned out to be just that. "But maybe after you've heard our history you'll understand why."
In each city she turned us over to local guides who shared their experiences as they showed us around. In Prague, Lenka Philippova said she was born under communism in 1980.
"My mother told us what we could say at home and what we had to say at school and in public," she said.
After communist rule ended in 1989, what was then Czechoslovakia became a parliamentary republic. Still she reiterated Papp's observation about eastern Europeans being gloomy.
"When people here ask you how you are, it's an invitation to complain," she said. "To say 'fine' sounds like bragging."
She introduced us to Zdnek Vacek, a teacher who was 6 years old and playing in his father's woodworking shop when Soviet police rushed in, handcuffed his father and ransacked the shop.
In this "city of 1,000 spires" we walked by ornate Gothic and Baroque buildings, past the famous astronomical clock whose entertaining figures emerge on the hour, and across the Charles Bridge over the Vltava River. Some of us opted for a tour of Prague Castle, where we discovered that the guards wear uniforms created by a Hollywood costume designer and that "Good King Wenceslas," who ruled here in the 10th century, was actually only a duke.
After a night of Czech food, music and dancing, we left the next morning to catch our ship. En route we stopped at Cesky Krumlov, a village that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The name means "crooked meadow" because the Vltava River meanders through it, but guide Karolina Kortusova said after Soviet rule it was nicknamed "Cesky crumbling off" because the communists didn't take care of the architecture. It has since been restored to its 14th-century glory.
We spent the night aboard our ship, the MS River Aria, in Linz, Austria, and left by coach early the next morning to tour Salzburg (named for the salt mines that put it on the map) with a stop en route at Mondsee (Moon Lake), where the wedding in "The Sound of Music" was filmed. Once in Salzburg we walked through the Mirabell Gardens, where the children in that movie learned to sing "Do-Re-Mi." "Edelweiss," it turns out, is not a stirring Austrian anthem but instead was written by Rodgers and Hammerstein for the musical play that later became the movie.
After lunch at Stiftskeller St. Peter, established in 803, some of us toured the house where Mozart was born and lived for several years. On the way back to our bus we walked across a bridge whose chain-link sides were covered with love locks — padlocks hung there by couples who throw the keys into the Salzach River below as a symbol of everlasting love.
Then finally, just after midnight, we sailed. The next thing we knew we were waking up in Melk, where we had stopped to tour the gilded Benedictine monastery, Melk Abbey.
"This was one of the main reasons I came on this trip," said Jim Coppedge, a trained medievalist from Indiana. His wife, Ginny, would have a similar moment when we visited St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, where she played her first organ concert as a music student touring Europe.
That afternoon we sailed through the picturesque Wachau Valley, through locks and past vineyards and castles. The 1,800-mile-long Danube, we learned, never has been "blue," but one theory is that composer Johann Strauss chose this adjective because it rhymed with Donau, the German word for Danube.
Our walking tour of Vienna with local guide Gabi Weisshappel took us to the Spanish Riding School to see the Lipizzaner horses and the chapel at the Imperial Palace where the Vienna Boys Choir performs. Weisshappel told us it was easy to find houses where Beethoven had lived since the impoverished composer moved every time the rent was due and had no fewer than 68 addresses here.
That night we attended a concert at Kursalon, where Strauss once played, for a program of classical pieces. Our Vienna experiences also included touring Schonbrunn Palace, the summer residence of the Hapsburg family.
When we were sailing there was plenty to do onboard, such as have a massage, watch a strudel-making demonstration or tour the compact galley from which Executive Chef Adrian Pavel feeds passengers and 40 crew members three meals a day. His menus reflected the culture of the countries we visited — Tafelspitz (boiled rump roast) in Austria, goulash in Hungary. In anticipation of our night out in Vienna, servers were dressed in period costumes and dessert arrived on a plate decorated with a chocolate musical score.
In Bratislava, Slovakia, we divided into still smaller groups and went for coffee in private homes. My group's host was Daria Juhasova, and some of the things she told us about life before and after communism were surprising.
"I know you Americans think everything was gray before and now it is colorful and good," she said. "You think we had guns, police and soldiers, but it wasn't like that. Nothing is black and white."
Under communism, she told us, housing, health care and education were provided, so some people's standard of living has actually gone down.
"But now we are more free," she said. "We can do what we want, travel where we want, spend our money how we want, and young people can pursue their interests."
Here (as we would also later see in Budapest) there is a monument built by the Soviets to celebrate their liberation of the area from the Nazis.
"The only problem is they forgot to leave," Papp commented wryly as she led us past the statue and toward a local art fair.
In Budapest we encountered Professor Gabor Szechy, who remembers being 12 years old when the Soviets brutally put down a student protest for more freedoms in 1956. Our tour here took us to Buda Castle and to the Matthias Church, where Emperor Franz Josef was crowned to music composed by Franz Liszt. Later we toured the Hospital in the Rock, fashioned during World War II in a cave under the castle. Today mannequins serve as doctors, nurses and patients.
The cruise ended with a nighttime turn up and down the Danube to see Budapest's dramatically lit architecture. But while we were enjoying the scenery the program directors were busy booking us on alternate flights since the pilots on our airline had gone on strike. We connected through cities we had not planned to visit, but we all made it home safely — and with great stories to tell when we got there.
WHEN YOU GO
Several cruise lines offer excellent tours of the Danube. I chose Grand Circle because of their promise of learning and discovery during the trip: www.gct.com.
Glenda Winders is a freelance writer. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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